Situation Setting Factors Underlying the Choice of the Strategies
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language” leads that the using of the speech acts as request strategies depend on situational contexts of which they are used. Some setting of the situations suggested
by Cook and Newson 2014 cover the communicating or functions i.e. requesting, commanding, suggesting, promising, apologizing, etc., topic area in which
participants are communicating i.e. general or informal case, business or formal, computing, medicine, law, etc., and situations which refer to a physical locations
i.e. in a bank, in the restaurant, at a hospital, in the court, in the office, etc. It was obvious that the three situational settings suggested above fulfilled
the factors which affected the choice of the request strategy by Medicine and Law students. However, this study focused on the strategies of requests which also
explained about the other three elements beside the main head acts, namely: the openers, internal and external modifications, that for the sake of requesting. In
addition, at the second point, the topic area and physical locations where the speaker and the addressee interacting was also important to be investigated in making
requests. The finding highlighted that speakers selected the requests strategy based
on formal and informal situation setting. Both groups adjusted their requests acts as seen in the following examples:
334 Excuse me, can you help me to open the door? My hand are full. Thank you
. DM 033
335 Excuse me, sir. Sorry, but can you put your cigarette out? DL175
These two responses were taken from situated contexts of the DCTs, 334 was ensued from the second situation, and the 335 from the sixth situation for informal
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setting. Both conversations took places at the company building, yet in unofficial occasion, thus there was no obligatory to employ formal speaking.
In the informal situation, the speakers did not need to embed many politeness markers or other d
owngraders. By saying “excuse me” and “sir”, it marked the politeness. In the same line, saying “thank you” and “sorry” to a stranger
whenever they were asked about something, could also be considered as showing politeness. Besides, to convey the main head acts, both speaker used indirect head
acts of “can you help me to open the door?” and “can you put your cigarette out?” as query preparatory.
In the contrary, when a speaker engaged in a formal interaction, more request strategies were required.
336 Sorry, sir. I need to tell you that
I can’t cope with this responsibility. I’ve tried hard on my present position. So, please sir, can you give me
another job to do? DM 148
337 Morning, sir. I want to talk to you about my job. I would like to
change my job, sir. I cannot cope with the responsibilities in my position sir. Thank you. DL 121
Both examples 336 and 337 were took place in the office of the formal setting.
There has been obvious rule in working life situation whenever the employee talked to their
boss, they had to use formal speaking like “sir” or “boss” as the deictic expression to address. Moreover, to avoid the possibility of rudeness when asking
the boss about something, often the speaker preceded it by using preparators to make it less straigh
t and tense. Two preparators employed as the examples were “I need to tell you that” and “I want to talk to you about my job”. In addition, the use
of the openers was a must as the acceptable way to begin the conversation with the one who had higher power and rank.
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